Millions of Americans are waking up to the fact that the Federal Reserve is bad, but very few of them can coherently explain why this is true. For decades, an unelected, privately-owned central bank has controlled America’s currency, run our economy and has driven the U.S. government to the brink of bankruptcy. It operates in great secrecy, it has never been subjected to a comprehensive audit and yet the actions it takes have an impact on every single American. It is an institution designed to drain wealth from the U.S. government (and ultimately from the American people) and transfer it to the ultra-wealthy. Have you ever wondered why a sovereign nation such as the United States has to borrow United States dollars from anyone? Have you ever wondered why a sovereign nation such as the United States does not even issue its own currency? Have you ever wondered why we allow a group of unelected private bankers to run our economy? (Read More...)

As the first of the 80 million Baby Boomers have begun to retire, it has become increasingly apparent that the United States is facing a pension crisis of unprecedented magnitude. State and local government pension plans are woefully underfunded, dozens of large corporate pension plans either have collapsed or are on the verge of collapsing, Social Security is a complete and total financial disaster and about half of all Americans essentially have nothing saved up for retirement. So yes, to say that we are facing a retirement crisis would be a tremendous understatement. There is simply no way that we can keep all of the financial promises that we have made to the Baby Boomer generation. Unfortunately, the crumbling U.S. economy simply cannot support the comfortable retirement of tens of millions of elderly Americans any longer. The truth is that we are all going to have to start fundamentally changing the way that we think about our golden years. (Read More...)

Most people have no idea what rare earth elements are, but a wide array of the technologies that we use every single day are dependent on them. Without rare earth elements, we would have no hybrid car batteries, flat screen televisions, cell phones or iPods. Without rare earth elements, the entire “green economy” would not be able to function, because almost all emerging green technologies use them. Not only that, but rare earth elements are used by the U.S. military in radar systems, missile-guidance systems, satellites and aircraft electronics. Without rare earth elements, the U.S. military (and militaries all over the globe) would not be able to function. There are 17 key rare earth elements that we rely on every day. But there is a huge problem. China owns more than 85 percent of the known global reserves of rare earth elements. Right now, the rest of the world is absolutely dependent on China’s exports of these metals. Without these Chinese exports, the western world would quickly run out of these precious resources. But in just a few years, the rapidly expanding Chinese economy will gobble up the entire domestic production of Chinese rare earth elements. So what will the rest of the world do at that point? (Read More...)

In a very alarming sign for the U.S. economy, foreclosures have continued to dramatically increase in 2010. But there has been a shift. Back in 2007 and 2008, experts tell us that most foreclosures were due to toxic mortgages. People were being suckered into mortgages that they couldn’t afford with “teaser rates” or with payments that would dramatically escalate after a few years, and when those mortgages reset, the people who had agreed to them no longer could make the payments. But now RealtyTrac says that unemployment has become the major reason for foreclosures. Millions of Americans have become chronically unemployed during the economic downturn and many of them are losing their homes as a result. But whatever the cause, one thing is certain – foreclosures have continued to skyrocket at a staggering rate. (Read More...)

Even just a decade ago, major pieces of legislation in the U.S. Congress would be just a few dozen pages long. But today, it seems like every time Congress passes an important bill it ends up being over a thousand pages long. In fact, the final version of the new financial reform law was over 2,300 pages. Overall, as we wrote about extensively in a previous article, this much-ballyhooed new law does a whole lot of nothing, but it turns out that lobbyists and special interests were able to insert a few nasty surprises that we are just now finding out about. But it was the same thing with the health care reform law. It was only after it was passed that most of us learned that it contained a provision that will force U.S. small businesses to collectively produce millions more 1099 tax forms each year. Now small businesses from coast to coast are screaming bloody murder about that provision but it is too late – the law has already passed. Unfortunately, there are some surprises in the recently passed financial reform law that are nearly just as bad. (Read More...)

Today, America’s best and brightest are graduating from college full of hopes and dreams, but cold, hard economic reality is rapidly crushing many of them. Record numbers of college graduates cannot find jobs. Hordes of others have been forced to take very low paying service jobs. At the same time, student loan debt loads have become more crushing than ever. The truth is that it is a really, really bad time to be a fresh college graduate. After spending tens of thousands of dollars and investing four (or more) years of their lives in an education, millions of recent college graduates find themselves waiting tables, tending bar, delivering pizzas and working next to (or subordinate to) people who never even went to college. At one time, a college degree was an automatic ticket to the middle class, but now for many Americans all a college degree means is crushing loan payments, sleepless nights and mind-numbing frustration. (Read More...)

Without millions more good jobs, the U.S. economy is simply never, ever going to recover. But at this point, there is every indication that the U.S. economy is going to continue to bleed jobs. In the past, employment would bounce up and down as the economy went through various cycles. But today what we are witnessing is something much different. Over the past 30 or 40 years, literally millions of good jobs have been shipped off to China, India and to dozens of third world nations where half-starving workers are more than happy to slave away for big global corporations for less than a dollar an hour. In the new “global economy” that we were promised would be so good for us, the expensive American worker is obsolete. The giant global predator corporations that now dominate our economy do not exist to provide you and your family with a nice home, two cars and college educations for all your children. No, their goal is to keep costs as low as possible so that their profits will be as high as possible. For many of these giant global predator corporations, that means that paying workers as close to zero as possible is the best decision for the bottom line. (Read More...)